Meet IoT’s latest target: A wooden stick
This year’s Edison Awards, held in the financial district of New York City, honored innovation in 15 categories. Winners ranged from industrial giants such as Catepillar to cosmetics. DIY home machines came from marketer NuSkin, and startup PicoBrew hawked conceptually Keurig-like machines for mixing custom moisturizers and brewing beer.
But one of the lowest-tech product to still include a modicum of electronics was Throat Scope, a light-up tongue depressor meant to compete with the wooden stick that has become synonymous with the “Say ‘Ahhh'” experience. Developed by an Australian mom who observed how the depressor-flashlight combo left doctors struggling to look into kids’ mouths while holding open their jaws, the Throat Scope lights up a patient’s pie hole without need for a separate light source. Beyond the market for doctors with fewer than three hands, Holland Healthcare, the company behind Throat Scope, hopes to tap into the consumer market, teaching oral inspectors about various warning signs for maladies such as tonsillitis and mouth ulcers. Read more…
